Liberty Alone

Darling of the left, Hugo Chavez is now cosying up to holocaust denying anti-jewish President Ahmadi-Nejad of Iran.
There is an amount of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ and since both view the US as the ‘great satan’ it is perhaps understandable. However, this also comes hand in hand with increased fear of antisemitism amongst Venezuela’s Jewish population (who up until now have been benefiting from Venezuela’s remarkable absence of historic antisemitism).

President Chavez has attempted do distance himself from the antisemitic views of Ahmadi-Nejad, however these attempts are undermined by some of his rhetoric - for example he claimed that the “descendants of those who killed Christ” and the “descendants of the same ones that kicked Bolivar out of here” had “taken possession of all the wealth in the world”, although he later denied he was talking about Jews (perhaps he was talking about the Italians?)

As many as 1/5 of the Jewish population of Venezuela has left since Chavez came to power, those who remain are increasingly worried by a rise in antisemitism, fueled in part by Chavez’s anti-Israeli rhetoric, which includes comparing Israel with the Nazis, even if he is not directly antisemitic.

(source - FT.com)

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